The meadow that used to be here has been scorched.
The tree fort cinders and nails,
charred stumps.
There are reasons for things yet
even the sparrows seem lost,
the sky too barren.
“Over there,” I say,
“is where we’d fight bare-fisted,
no one ever winning.”
She says I must have loved him then.
The wind runs its fingers across the slope
as the ground gossips
about events that never happened.
We head back to the old house
where the others are telling
tall tales
so that everyone
looks good.

Sweetness loses its savor,
And if you’re that sorry slick type,
You’ll last about two seconds,
Before a real man,
Decks your sorry ass,
And makes you bleed like a bitch.

So come at me son,
Come the fuck at me.

Anyways,
In other news,

Fat lips squirm like a red worm,
Wriggling obscenely in screaming half seen memories,
And infuriating implications.
Pulse pumping like an eel crashing through my veins,
And eyes seeing nothing,
Besides the insides,
Of my head, and the other, that bled,
A bittersweet red.

Drugs only get you so far.
Blowing a line off her bare thigh,
At the Heart of Texas motel,
Off Highway 290.
A bottle of Jack in one hand,
And the other slowly sliding,
Steadily down,
The smooth flesh of today’s freshest catch,
To where I’m sure your imagination has already led.
And then out.
Into the warm night air.
Onto the pale moonlit street.
Where summer lounges in sultry heat.

And I light a cigarette,
With a silvery flick of my wrist,
And make my way down these city streets,
My streets, though cold, graying and old.
Like the bony grasping fingers of a lecherous mayor,
Fervently clawing at the soft young body of a dead whore,
Whose glassy eyes gaze at starry skies like rotting fish scales,
Reflecting pale will o’ wisps,
Suspended amongst the turbulent motion,
Of the merciless ocean.

And I’ll traverse these city streets,
Cracking his knuckles with every clacking impact,
Of the riding heels,
Of my black ostrich hide boots.
Or singe the Old Man’s sensibilities
In my daddy’s white truck
Too big to be softy slick, but just the size for a hard fuck
And to lie in afterwards
In dizzy sex sweat drenched dazed ecstasy
And marvel at the will o’ wisps
Watching beyond the fogged windows

At the Bitter End
There’s a bar, a bogie, and a light
Once you’ve gotten kicked out of the one
And smoked the other
There ain’t much left to do
But light yourself on fire
And then drown in the gutter
Ever burning soul outliving charred corpse
Remaining in eternal, beautiful agony

Thursday, April 28, 2011

If there had been magic
The cellophane I held up so that light could shine right through,
while tug of caramel and nut still sang sweetly in my mouth,
its twist-creased part smoothed clarity, its richly purple glow
would become a robe of velvet, ermine edged,
sweeping majesty across a stone-flagged floor.

If there had been magic
The king would overrule, stern voiced, his crimson foil dressed queen,
dark widow’s peak misleadingly heart-shaping whitened face.
She’d softly speak to her liege lordly spouse, not haughty swirl her skirts,
while cherried lips spat stoney words that teetered on the edge of taunt,
imperious, insulting in the thrusting of her pearl encrusted gown.

If there had been magic
The king and queen would be united in their choice of suitor for their daughter.
And she would acquiesce, sweet strawberry joy.
Instead her pink stained skin is stamped with teenage tantrums,
her flounces deliquescent, flirting with her mother’s pirate king
and her sulks incense her father’s fledged but not yet full grown prince.

If there had been magic
The turquoise and silver trappings of the adolescent Prince
would have stiffened his soft-fudged and yielding spine.
Instead of which the princess fell for Black Jack’s flashing eyes,
his treasure chest of gold moidores, maps and bones and rum.
Full failed to see the villainy behind his pantomime façade.

The sober morning
put me in a foul mood.
The birds awoke me
and snapped me from my dream.
The clear sky needed
rain and clouds, maybe a
strong wind. I wanted
a fever to make me
go back to sleep and
dream again of her warmth.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

all it takes is
this record that I’ve kept
for the last 20 years to
bring you back again
and
when I start playing it
I’m the same person
I was before
and
you’re dancing
next to me
moving your body
slowly to the beat
and
you’re laughing
your long hair
twirling in the air
and
you brush
your fingers lightly
across my cheek
but
when the music ends
I’m still here
listening to the silence
getting drunk
without you

Here I am below the weather
as the sky pelts me with rain.
I am injured by life’s poor luck,
immobile to love’s desire.
In silence I lick my wounds as
she exists, but is out of
reach. I never been so afraid
to lose something I have no
chance to attain. Her love is for
somebody else. Even I have
to admit it to myself.
Here I am below the dark clouds
taking a shower of rain.
I could hide my tears this evening.

the grand inquisitor of the office
wants to know why
i’m eating peanut butter again
on my lunch
wants to know what that stack
of paper is in my hand
why i haven’t shaved
the hair off of my neck in weeks
why i look down on such a sunny day
why i have gray hair in my beard
at my age
because her husband’s hair is still
a beautiful blonde
wants to know how old i am anyway
when my birthday is
wants to know how my vacation was
what did i do
how my niece is
what my wife is like
why i hate kids
isn’t satisfied when i tell her the vacation
was all right

the grand inquisitor of the office
wants to know if i want to order take out
with everyone else
if i eat pizza or chinese food
or just that peanut butter all of the time
wants me to throw a few bucks into the office
lottery pool
is still curious about that stack of paper
in my hands
or why i’m always reading one of those books
while she flips through her cell phone
and the new york post
wants to know why i bought those pants
that shirt
those shoes
questions why it is that i keep going to europe
when america ain’t so bad
gets nervous when i tell her that i hate disney
and intelligent design

the grand inquisitor of the office
says america love it or leave it
asks me why i don’t own a car
asks me more questions than my wife
wants to know
what would make me say something like that
has no sense of irony
no humor in her soul
tells me that she’ll still come to work
if they win that lottery pool
has probably never read dostoevsky
alone on a rain soaked day
wants to know why i come to work
with a hangover
and hide in my office for hours
gets confused when i ask her
where it is that she keeps her
pitchfork and horns
when she comes into the office
every morning.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

The people were
invisible.
The way they talked
without their mouths
was strange. On their
faces a new
foot-like appendage
supported their eyes,
noses, and mouths.
The entire head
was foot-like, but
they were mere ghosts,
invisible.
I was able
to see them because
I have this gift,
to see things others
cannot see.
But sometimes I
just see what I
want to see and
that is a problem.

Your hair is so intoxicated in inspiration
that it has fallen all over your left eye.
I can see the golden guitar in your face;
I can see your fantastic face in the guitar.

There are so many mad musical notes sparkling
and waltzing all along your beautiful brown hair,
without your permission. There’s a simple
dream in your right eye too but
I know that you’ve learnt life’s not a simple song.

On your innocent cheeks the scars
of past tears and sufferings are still visible,
but now your melodious smile is flourishing
smoothly, making you a better woman.

Always be as melodic and strong
as your Taurus guitar, poetic Señorita.

women laughing from
the table in the corner
and
I’m sitting alone
drinking my beer
eating boneless buffalo wings
and
trying to concentrate on
the big-screen TV
well-dressed women
with their perfect hair
getting together after work
drinking tall glasses
filled with brightly-colored drinks
and
I hear their voices
all blending together
another burst of
their laughter rising up
and
I feel like getting up
from my table and
walking over there
waiting for them to
stop talking when
they see me standing there
before asking them
what it is they want
demanding them to tell me
because
I really need to know

Thursday, April 21, 2011

i don’t care
i sit here drinking cheap red wine
before the workday
and i do not care
i listen to the radio
read the fiction of peter stamm
and a biography on patrick henry
awaiting the late shift again
and i drink the cheap red
with exhaustion and resignation
and do not care about myself
or anything else
i think about the gray skies outside
and april showers bringing may flowers
for us to stand on
i marvel at the way wine burns
the empty stomach
and i have stories out there
useless stories written on useless mornings
poems easing down the information superhighway
seeping into third rate rags
like japanese radiation flowing into
the green ocean
and i drink the cheap red wine
just to feel the burn
and i do not care about the poems, the stories,
or the radiation
for i am hardly a man
hardly a poet
i am muted and hungry
i specialize in picking out lettuce and daffodils
on hungover sunday afternoons
i am no patrick henry
but i have a dumb, american confidence about me
that i just can’t quell
it shows on my face
and i have a new tube of toothpaste
to take away the wine taste
when my free time is all used up
and a sink that almost drains it all away
when i spit out the wine and blood
and peppermint flavor
so i must be doing something right
after all of these years.

I saw Quinn again tonight,
first time in years, sailing the streets,
weaving through people,
collar up, head cocked,
arms like telephone poles sunk
in the pockets of his overcoat,

the brilliant pennants of his long red hair
waving over the stadium
where years ago he took my handoff,
bucked off guard, found the free field,
and heaved like a bison into the end zone.

Tonight, when Quinn wove by me muttering,
I should have handed him the ball.
I should have screamed, “Go, Quinn, go!”
He would have stiff-armed the lamppost,
found the free field again,
left all in his wake to gawk

as he hit the end zone
and circled the goal posts,
whooping and laughing,
flinging the ball like a spear
over the cross-bar,
back to Iraq.

How do you go someplace with nothing?
We have different memories, you and I,
entering the room of other thought,
a rude space strong as dripping water,
a lapse of memory, a lasting envy,
whatever this is sitting next to me
cursing into the yellow darkness.

I never lose sight of responsibility.

On the train platform of predators,
I do as the wolves taught me—
stare into them until they leave me go.
But none of this has any real importance.
Twice I lost my way. This is what is important.
Once in the snowfields, Northern Montana
and again in the bogs, Southern Wisconsin.
Last night I felt my place slip again.
Where do you think you are going?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

I'll paint your sweet portrait with tightly shut eyes
With pleasure whenever you ask.
Though hands ever shaking and colder than ice
Do find it a difficult task.

I'll cherish the portrait and hang it above
My empty not warm enough bed
To guard all the secrets of mystery love
And clear the mess in my head.

The mirror that's placed on the opposite wall
Will certainly add to its charm,
My room and your portrait will turn to one whole -
This place will incur no more harm.

Madness So Sweet

Pearls of fantasies shine in the waters of hope
That February turned tears to.
We will certainly free weakened hands from the ropes
If wonder is all that we do.

Let us build a small ship as a shelter-to-be
And paint it in colors of spring.
It is madness so sweet to spend life on the sea;
I will turn to a siren and sing.

In the song of my heart that will beat twice as fast,
Your own inner voice will reveal.
Reminiscence I'll crave is for ages to last,
I'll gift you a moment to steal.

Author's note: I want the whole world to know that there are still people on planet Earth who can inspire the most sincere poetry and who are worth devoting it to. And these two pieces are unique twice, as they are written not only for such a special person, but also about him.

A vast, unbroken, even, barren horizon extends forever behind me.
I have been traveling for hours, for years, and have defeated monuments,
Problems from my past, firmly burying them in the background of my life,
Then running like hell, or at least driving extremely fast in my getaway car.
Ex-wives, ex-jobs, ex-bills, and ex-responsibilities have all been reduced,
To uniform monotony as I travel farther eastward, further backward in time.
I have crushed the newness of the Rockies and only the ancient plain and prairie,
The great American Middle, now surrounds me. The horizon line in my rear-view
Mirror lies unbroken and receding. Ahead appear occasional contours,
Undulations created by trickles and freshets, created by brooks and streams,
Whose courses will evenly wear down these slight elevations and acclivities.

This expanse has been referred to as leaves of grass, seas of grass, oceans of
Rooted grains heaving and undulating as zephyrs and storms play back and
Forth over colored surfaces. Like the Great Lakes and greater salt water oceans
Change mood and color, so these inland seas variously paint calm and anger,
Rage and rest. Great ships ply this surface too, released across but anchored
Still to set courses plotted by asphalt, concrete, oil, and rutted dirt. Only in
Seasons of plenty do the green, orange and red harvesters turn aside, allowed
Off course, trolling the shallows back and forth relentlessly, leaving the horizon
Vast again, unbroken, even, barren, extending before me -- seemingly forever.

Can you
give up the ghost
of a time
and a place
and remember
nothing?
Can you
move freely
unclothed
in and out
in neither direction
not counting?
Can you hold warmth,
forgetting it is
slipping through your fingers
tomorrow
because it really is
not?
Because there is no forgetting,
and there is no holding.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Behind the desk, wire frames pinch
the tip of his nose, a pile of 1040s
sit neatly before him. Phone rings,
he sighs, braces for the onslaught,
denials
whines,
insults,
expletives.
then SLAM!

Next file surprises, Occupation: clown.
A white face looms before him, voiceless,
happy to see him. Large gloved hands attempt
to pull his slack mouth into a smile. a horn
is honking somewhere, a happy horn,
not the blare of the street. Confetti falls
to his desk, he smells popcorn, there are
jugglers. They balance files on their heads,
toss wireless phones, a calliope is heard
in the men's room. He investigates.

Before the mirror, startled hands fly
to his whitewashed face, squeeze
a rotund red nose, stroke rainbow hair,
snap a polka-dot bowtie. a smile
he recalls spreads across his face.
He carries it back to his desk,
challenges the incessant phone.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

There is something about it that is so rich. Heavy. Culture is cultivated into the dirt, intertwined with air and dust and piano keys of sunlight. The song sounds along tops of the mountains, sharp, cutting through the breeze and into layers of skin and bone and brick. The cracks in the stone and clay weather below my feet, the moths and mosquitos spiral slowly overhead, the clear sky is strewn with pink and orange in the distance and I can do nothing but kneel as my knees grow weak, nothing but submit my eyelids shut to powerlessness in a bittersweet surrender.

There is something about it that is so fleeting. The laughter that streams, like ripples of a stone-harrased river from opaque infant-white to the most sun-spotted wrinkles, the distance between year and face measured only in worlds, or maybe just shallow breath. The tears; unspoken but understood, fingers and bodies tangeled to one, sleepless eyes pressed tightly together holding back the blood of seas and stories away. Questions lit, ignited and burned to rubble like my father’s home in the face of no answers, the gaps in the story running deep like the lengths from wet grains of salt and sand to the most majestic of snow-capped summits. We can do nothing but breathe, the thick perfume of fruit and blossom seeping into us. The moon awaits dawn to dusk again and the dogs bark and things still go unnoticed as they do, but we are and we are anyway.

Maggie stood by her mother's shins at the airport, her five-year-old self, invisible. When her father emerged from the tunnel, she saw him as a brown paper bag. Her mother, a tuna sandwich with the crusts removed.

A sorceress handed her a carnation on the way to the cab. Her parents shuffled ahead, unaware that she has paused by the glass doors. Smiling, the Sorceress hummed a private tune. She held Maggie's hand and they danced to the beat of the magic doors, as they whooshed open and shut.

Maggie decided to go home with this woman, instead of the strangers by the cab. She could not belong to them—with their matching slacks and brown turtlenecks. Surely, they stole her from this woman with the tangerine robes and bundle of fragrant carnations.

Her mother discovered that she was no longer in tow and scooted back through the doors. She frowned at the Sorceress, because she knew that Maggie had chosen her to be her real mother.

The sorceress waved. In the cab, Maggie held the carnation to her nose to mask the smell of stale sweat and cigars, and hummed her own private tune.

One quick twist of the neck.
There it is. Hanging high
Amidst the branches of the
Eucalyptus trees. Moon glow
Through speckled leaf shadows
Sprinkled on the patio beneath
My feet. Me swinging slowly
Back and forth; night time,
Outside with the dead again

His name is Vanderbilt. Or at least his last name is. No one knows his first name. The living only know him as Vanderbilt, or the Tequila King. He earned the title when he out drank four bikers in faded leather jackets from Utah, each man weighing slightly less than a hippopotamus.

Vanderbilt loved music and even more to play it. He had a Stratocaster, one with flames that flickered turquoise under the strumming of his wrist. Music didn’t pay the bills, so he traded his picks for screwdriver heads and his guitar for a hammer. The hammer rusted on the top, growing like a cancer down the hilt.

Sometimes, Vanderbilt would play a show or two at the bar, under cheap stage lights burning violet and collecting moths like street lamps. His friends would cheer, spilling their drinks and falling out of bar stools. He knew the crowd was biased and drunk and aged, but as was he. Women that were part of the audience looked at Vanderbilt lustfully. They said his beard, one that wisped up like a tongue, similar to a goat’s, was what made him. He would choose to be with whomever he found attractive that night, but never would he find himself in a relationship or in love. Vanderbilt was in love once, and would never love another.

His wife had played stand-up bass and smelled like crushed rose petals. She and Vanderbilt tied the knot when they were young, nineteen for Vanderbilt and one year younger for her. There were nights spent on his slick ’78 Monte Carlo’s hood gazing at stars with their eyelids half shut, the light glimmering off their lashes and raining down like fireworks. Moments like that confirmed for him that she was the one.

They were poor. With no high school diplomas, they didn’t have an income to support a child. So when she bore him, they chose adoption, in hopes they could forgot the terrifying feelings they had when he came crying and reaching and squirming from the womb. Vanderbilt reassured her that one day they would meet him again, when he was older and understood their decision.
Vanderbilt spent thirteen years in jail for drunk driving and killing his wife in a car crash. They had drank, tequila, and tried to drive the ’78 home on a rainy April night in ‘92. When Vanderbilt dozed off to the sound of pattering rain, a tree branch punched through the windshield of the car and drilled a hole through his wife’s skull. Her head, after the accident, looked like the apples on trees he used eat from as a child. They were blood red, glistening planets that hung from the branches and orbited around the trunk. Now, the apples wouldn’t be the size of his fist, but when he was young they were bigger, more filling.

Two years after he got out of jail, he met his son. The night he appeared on Vanderbilt’s porch, they had an exchange, one no louder than the crickets rubbing their wings in the shadows of towering grass.

“So you’re my Dad, huh?”

“Biological, yeah.”

“Hm.”

“What?”

“Somehow I expected this. This porch, this dog, you.”

“Well, you have smart genes.”

“Yeah.”

“Want a drink?”

“No, I’m only eighteen.”

“Oh, I gotcha.”

“So your names Vanderblit or something like that? The file only said your last name.”

“It’s Vanderbilt. Adolfo Vanderbilt.”

“Adolfo? Some name you got there.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“Have a light?’

“You smoke?”

“I’m eighteen.”

“Right. Here you go. Menthol lights?”

“Yeah, makes it taste better.”

Vanderbilt is still the tequila king, and in fact, is now titled the Miller king. He still plays shows under violet moth winged lights for a crowd that will never boo him off stage. The hammer is still clenched in his hand and the beard that hangs from his chin still twirls, curls, and tangles. When he smokes now though, he chooses Menthol lights, because they taste better

Poets work at night
when time does not press on them
when the crowd’s noise is hushed
and the hour’s lynching is over.
Poets work in the dark
like night hawks or nightingales
whose song is so sweet
and fear they are offending God.
But poets, in their silence
make a higher noise
than a golden dome of stars

I wait for you and every day
I die down little by little
and I have forgotten your face.
They ask me if my despair
is the same as your absence
no, it is something more:
it’s an immovable death gesture
I can’t give you as a gift.

I met wonders in you
love wonders so new
they looked like shells
where I could smell the sea
and simple empty beaches
I got lost in that love as in a storm
but I kept my heart very still
because I knew so well that it loved an illusion.

Alda Merini was one of Italy's most important and beloved poetic voices. She won many of Italy’s major national literary prizes and was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, once by France and once by Italy. She was born in Milan and died there in November 2009 at the age of 78.

The Camel thanks Claudia Rey for bringing her voice to the Saloon.

Photograph by Giuliano Grittini. Use permitted under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Desire had opened him
To what he really was.
Once a piece of his soul,
Now a glittering demon
Swirling in furious circles
Around what he was not,
Looping and diving in wild ellipses,
Infects what he could or might become.
Although his desire contains the
Ever-moving demon inside him,
It can offer no resting place.
And he grows afraid of his desire.

Your sunglasses tucked in your wavy hair,
your gracious elbows resting on the table,
you look almost like a modern Mona Lisa,
except that your smile is more charming.

The river of beauty flows in you.
Behold! Behind you the young coconut trees
look like excited fireworks in
brown, yellow and tender green sparks,
celebrating your rustic beauty.

Your veins are the strings of a calm guitar.
Having met misery and life’s dark demons,
you seem now ready to enjoy
long hours of luck and eternal joy,
just like any other pretty woman.

Your cheeks want to move like a merry piano.
And it’s good that the painting does
not show your feet; now you
just cannot run away.
So, live in this prison of delight!
God made you with very special hands.Take care of your heartbeats.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

I used to be young and naïve enough
to believe you could be anything you wanted
if you put your mind to it.
For the longest time, I wanted
to be a bad guy wrestler,
like Zeus or the Iron Sheik.
I bought wrestling magazines
and saved money for a weight bench
and for the tattoo of a red dragon
I was going to have inked on my chest.
Late at night, I replaced my father’s snores
with the standing ovation of a crowd
and the sound of them chanting my name.
But my father said I didn’t have
the right body type and at the time
I didn’t know what steroids were.
So I gave up and started saving money
for a guitar. It took a year,
and I plucked and strummed
alone in my bedroom, imagining
the sell out crowd singing along
to the songs I wrote
about not accomplishing the goals
I had set out to achieve. But my fingers
wouldn’t move the way
I wanted them to move.
As I grew older I turned my attention
to writing poems, short stories,
and dreamt of a novel. I dropped out
of university and found a job that paid
three dollars above minimum wage
at a plastic factory. A job that gave me
routine, and time alone to write.
I sat on stools tying knots in the tiny strands
of plastic, feeding them through
a big machine, and dreaming of what
I was going to go home to write about.
That was eight years ago, and
I still haven’t written anything,
except the words to this poem
and the acknowledgements
to a novel I couldn’t finish.
So that’s another dream gone to the wayside,
but you should see how many knots
I can tie in under a minute.

The most beautiful thing
about death
is that it never ends.
There is no question mark
hanging on a life sentence
like a sober friend
dragging the drunkard
down. Imagine the joy
of retiring to bed
knowing you’ll never need
to wake.

Now imagine the terror
of the God brigade,
armouring themselves
with crosses
and whips
and bodyguards of tears,
knowing that only terror
and judgement awaits;
followed by eternal torment
on a scale so gross
that forty years
of nine till five
will seem like sunburn
beside it. Where’s the glory
in living forever
when you’ll spend it
on your knees? You’ll beg
through the afterlife
the same way you begged
through this one.

I’ll cut you a deal, old man:
you don’t pray for me
and I won’t pray for you.
And if God demands
my contrition
tell Him to pray for mine
first,
and I’ll see what I can do.

When the lake magic evaporated we all
either married or divorced; some did both.
Sonar Jack held out the longest, last man
on the dock when the spells ran dry.

IV.

Stories arrive predictably post-season.
My water-under-the-bridge reckoning
would be years in the making, characters
emerging ghost-like on the dock, though
mouthy with opinions. They have shiny
new names but old faces.

Only faithful Max would cross the tale's
blood-brain barrier intact, as an older
Black Lab sometimes will, out of innate
loyalty or from long-ingrained habit.

The narrative cannot yet declare itself
fact or fiction, but it's a hard water story.
Given plot, characters, and point of view,
I'd have to say my money's on the Lab.

I've written in rabbits; a memory of Max
chases them in cornfields while I work.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

I am
just slightly
off center of a
Copernicus
universe,
where pictures
featuring
uncontrolled
chaos is perfect,
signified as an
asteroid
equivalent to the
square-footage
of Arizona
hurtling
end-over-end
towards
my blissfully
ignorant
earth.

The woman I see day after day
In the city we both call home
With its twisting freeways and buildings scraping the sky
She walks with elegance
With grace
With legs of a runway model
With calves that dance upwards with each passing step of her heel
She drifts like a leaf in a gentle spring breeze
To me, she seems, almost a dream
Perfectly defined in every way
With her beautiful smile and flowing blond hair
That sways gently side to side
Her green eyes, so mysterious when caught in her gaze
A gaze that peers into my soul as she passes me by
I wonder, will she ever speak
Or will I be the one to say the first word
But wait
Today could be the day that the silence between us is broken
She’s looking right at me, like never before
Butterflies danced in my stomach as she reached for my hand
Letting go of my cardboard sign I took what she was giving
A smile and a dollar
A smile that filled me with hope
If only for a brief moment
A moment I’ll cling too like the life I once had
A moment that faded with her as she stepped out of sight

There is a war,
and this war goes on forever.
You won’t know it’s there;
no one will tell you about it.

Survivors of the war have no scars to show,
they have no limbs missing.
In their eyes, one could see,
if one would choose to,
the battlefields, cities in ruins,
endless nights under a red sky,
and when they speak,
if one would choose to listen,
one could hear the distant echoes of gunfire
and explosion.

Walk the streets;
ride the subway;
somewhere along your journey you will find them,
you will hear them whispered, maybe,
you will see them on a wall about to crumble
from their weight;
you will finally know the words,

verses of spoken poetry,
spoken bullets of war poetry,
pronounced fiercely,
slowly,
violently,
words that roll like tanks on tongues of gravel,
words in neat piles,

ammo for the war that is fought within.

There is a war,
and this war goes on forever.
You won’t know it’s there;
you won’t know that you are fighting it.

The war leaves no scars to show,
no stories from the battlefield to share.
Only the distant echoes
of gunfire and explosion,
in your voice.

We was scammed.
30 years working
at the bottom of the well
in the oil-thick fluid drive
of American Hades,
where newcomers start
at the bottom, societal
recruits, plebes, and
pledges, scummies
seeing the rise to the top
as a struggle, but always
with hope, and an eye
to the light above.

We was scammed,
The light got brighter,
came at us faster
… for a while it seemed
the muck was thinner,
the surface nearer,
and with lungs aching
for the oxygen
we workers, schooled
in appropriate behavior,
moved more quickly
in the fashion of herds
toward the light above.

We was scammed.
The surface seemed nearer,
the light seemed brighter,
uncertainty went the way
of memory, fading as if
what made those memories
never did exist, and the whorl
of anticipation carried
days to extremes where
dreams are extinguished.
Where the last race
is the next race, but with
no time to train.

The voices surround me,
some quietly tugging
at my subconscious,
others screaming loudly
for my attention.
In the midst of it all
I sit with pen in hand,
trying to capture it all,
listening intently
as the story unfolds
around me.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

There is a great fire,
a great fire in the desert
and animals gather on the dunes,
watching it from afar.

We converge around it,
oblivious to the eyes on the dunes lying in the distance,
oblivious to the ever-changing landscape around us.
We dance in homocentric circles, our faces painted red
by the fiery glow, wet faces painted red,
flames claiming the glistening surface of tears on our cheeks.

Coming from all directions,
we meet where the flames are high,
bearing no names,
no identity.
The past is an unnecessary burden,
so our feet go deep in the sand wherever we walk
but we bear no names for others.

Tears on our cheeks as we dance around our sun,
flames read our names to ourselves as they graze
our faces, turning them into steam, forming clouds.
Still, no redemption for the past; there is no need for that.
Future is the need that we have. We need a Future.
And time;

time is animals gathering on dunes to watch planets
orbiting the great fire in the distance.
Each of us, a planet of memories and words buried
in the ever-changing landscape of the desert
in our hearts.

The millions of minions of men hurry to the sea,
Like the erred myth of the marching lemmings,
They are drawn silently back to their source.
None turn away from the sea and all,
All are drawn forward to the edge of the abyss,
Lapping against the yellowed shore.

Their shadows and pasts are cast behind them,
As they silently stare into the star beyond the sea.
Is the sun rising or setting, the day coming or going,
Are these watchers arriving or departing?

Perhaps our views are ever changing, one moment to the next,
Much as the basic truths of our visual psychology,
Shaken and altered by perspective and proportion,
Are made liquid to acknowledge the limits of our perception.

Shadowed figures, hooded as monks;
Even the yellow ones appear
Clad in saffron robes or foul-weather gear.
What can be more foul than not to know
If you are coming or going,
Regardless of the time?

A black bird parades in my garden
wings partly spread, tail in a fan,
yellow beak half open,
while his future partner
combs her feathers under a bush
and pretends not to see him.
At last he takes wing
and she follows suit.
So he did win her over, I smile.
Soon there’ll be a new nest.
Don’t think so, quips my daughter.
I’d say she simply had enough
and chased him off.

When I bought my acre of contentment in Randolph County, North Carolina, and built on it, I was separated from Jim Garn, my nearest neighbor, by a patch of hard-rock land on which only a scraggly, sparse lone pine tree grew. At its very top was a silver plastic star. A single red Christmas ornament graced a lower limb. When Jim came over to welcome me, I commented on the tree.

"Christmas is long gone," I told him. "Why don't you take the ornaments off your Christmas tree?"

"It isn't a Christmas tree," he answered. "It's a Christmas spirit tree. Christmas is just one day a year. The spirit of Christmas should last all year long."

Weirdo, I thought. I wonder what other far-out theories he has. But year long Christmas spirit wasn't a theory to him. It was a way of life. When I fell at work and was laid-up for three weeks I regularly found gifts on my doorstep. Fresh vegetables. Fruit. A can of blackberries. A green tomato pie. I knew they were from him, because anyone else would havehad to use my long driveway and would have been seen. When I was back on my feet, I broached the subject with Jim.

"Why didn't you wait when you brought the gifts so I could thank you?"

"I was only the deliveryman," he said. "You should thank Him who made the gift
possible."

Over time I heard of other acts of kindness on his part. Always anonymous. Never waiting to be thanked.

One day the tax assessor came to his door. The door was ajar. Religious music came from a radio within. He knocked, but got no answer. Pushing to door open, he saw Garn, sitting lifeless in his rocking chair.

"What a horrible way to die," someone said. "Alone and deserted."

I didn't answer. But in the quiet of my home I bowed my head. "Lord, take his soul and be gentle," I prayed. "He was one of the good ones. You and I know that the good are never alone and deserted."

Friday, April 1, 2011

It's Saturday.
I'm going to the antique shop
to buy relatives.
Granddad went to college
Colby, class of 1910.
Few of his kind did.
Old photo, hard to see. He's the one
back row on the ledge
before sailing to WW 1.

Wedding Day. Grandma in white
Here's the boat they took that night.
Stock certificates from companies he sold.
Rotary president's pin
golf club trophy.
Quite a guy. I'm very proud
of the family I'm in.

Amidst devils in a lonely bed,
I rest with chimeras only in my head.
Still, a nightmare breathes in adamantine chains.
Spake the grisly terrors of Amyclaeans,

"Psst, what never breathes desires
to march against the hours
from those who write down the rhyme
of history time after time.
Adonis, Apollo, and Venus
are as old as Methuselah.
Our history once said they were true
and so did you, and so do you."